Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/jewish_wisdom/page/23/)
Holy Beggars is a page-turner that reads like a memoir and weaves together journalism, history, deep Jewish teaching, rollicking storytelling, and poetic tribute. It paints a cinematic panorama of the 1960s in San Francisco, explores the impact of the era of “tune in, turn on, drop out,” and describes Rabbi Carlebach’s expansive musical career.
Most of this week’s perasha deals with the authority structures of the society meant to be established in the new land. First we are presented with the commandment to appoint judges and magistrates at all the gates, then in cases of doubt, we are told to turn to the priests. Following this comes the appointing of a king, and finally the role of the prophet is elucidated.
This week’s perasha begins with a resounding cry (Devarim 11:26): “See! I am presenting before you all today, a blessing and a curse! A blessing such that you shall keep my commandments…and a curse should you not hearken unto my commands and veer from the way set before you today…” The commentators note several interesting points as they dissect virtually every word in this passage; we will note several.
Dr. Tamar Ross has pointed out that while many of the Halachic hurdles that prevent full participation by Jewish women in Jewish life can be overcome by proper analysis of the Halachic texts, there is still not yet an adequate theology of the specifically feminine in Judaism to provide meaning to the contemporary observant woman. For many years (even back in Seattle and Juneau, Alaska), I have been attempting to conceptualize just such a theology, without recourse to an essentialist argument, or one that derives from male defined gender roles.
At the beginning of this week’s perasha, we are told by Moshe of his furtive attempts to persuade Gd to let him enter the land of Canaan. “And I besought the Lord in that time saying’. Virtually every word in this verse is in need of explication.
Editor’s note: When as a teenager I became immersed in the writings of the Prophets, I was most excited by the Prophet Jeremiah. My parents, who thought I was making a big mistake to have decided to become a rabbi, told me that I really sounded more like a prophet, and that one could not combine a deep prophetic vision with being a congregational rabbi, because the congregation would fire anyone who would challenge their comfortable life-style. Moreover, they warned me that people would always be offended by the “truth-telling” and “confrontational attitude” of the prophets in general and Jeremiah in particular. But their biggest challenge was this: “What’s the use of being a prophet when the prophets were all such failures? They were scorned in their life-times, and their message was not really heard by those to whom it was spoken or written.
There is a well known teaching that appears several times in the Talmud and Midrash (JT Yoma 1:1, Yalkut Tehillim 886), which states that ‘any generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is considered as if that generation had itself destroyed the Temple’. Certainly this would seem to be a rather severe judgement, for as the Sefat Emet points out, many generations containing many great and righteous people have passed without the Temple being rebuilt, and it would be fairly extreme to say of them that they had personally destroyed the Temple.
Perashat Devarim is the beginning of Moshe’s extended deathbed monologue, presented just as the people are preparing to enter the land, under a new leadership. In these perashiyot, we have a review by Moshe of the events of the Exodus, along with a repetition of many mitzvot and some theological statements, in a tone traditionally interpreted as critique or “tochacha”.
This is a test of whether excerpts are shown or only the first sentence or two.
At the beginning of this week’s perasha, which is really the continuation of last week’s story, we are told of the priesthood given as a reward to Pinchas for killing the insurrectionary leader of the tribe of Shimon and his consort, a Midianite woman.
Perashat Balak stands as a unique narrative segment in the Torah. For the first time, we are given a narrative episode which is entirely not experienced by the Israelites; what in the entertainment world might be called a “behind the scenes” presentation, or to use contemporary film theory terminology, we are “sutured in” from an entirely different vantage point, outside of the usual concern with the Exodus.
This weeks perasha begins with the laws of ritual purification mandated by contact with the dead. The ceremony, in days when the Temple stood, involved the ashes of a red heifer, which were reconstituted by the priest with purified water (an early “not-from-concentrate” product, I suppose, and in which no downer cattle could be used) and sprinkled upon the individual or object that needed purification. Curiously, while the formerly ritually defiled individual was now ritually pure, the priest that performed the ceremony became himself temporarily ritually defiled, as the Talmudic phrase goes, “the ashes of the red heifer purify the defiled and defile the pure”.
Just as the state should never criminalize abortion, it should never criminalize circumcision.